An oxygen tank and blanket are photographed in front of the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

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CHICO, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 13: Suzanne Kaksonen and her pet bird, Buddy, snuggle in the Walmart parking lot in Chico, Calif., where a tent city of people made homeless by the deadly Camp Fire continues to grow Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

A burned burned wheelchair is photographed near the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 13: Camp Fire victim Kika Powers wakes up Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in the parking lot of a Chico, Calif. Walmart where he works in the bicycle department. Powers lived in the community of Magalia above Paradise. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 13: Tammy Mezera ponders an uncertain future at a growing tent city of homeless Camp Fire victims living in the parking lot of a Chico, Calif. Walmart on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 13: Volunteers wear masks while setting up clothes racks, Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in Chico, Calif., Walmart where a tent city for people displaced by the devastating Camp Fire continues to grow. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 13: People made homeless by the devastating Camp Fire in Butte County live in a tent city growing around the Walmart parking lot Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018, in Chico, Calif. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Tombstones are photographed at the Paradise Cemetery District in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. The Camp Fire burned near but the cemetery was not harmed during the blaze. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: An Alameda County Sheriff’s Department Deputy from the coroner’s bureau examine a victim of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

An oxygen tank and blanket are photographed in front of the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 13: 74-year-old Jackie Wineland, one of the thousands of Camp Fire victims now homeless, uses her oxygen tank at tent city growing in the WalMart parking lot in Chico, Calif., Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: A PG&E truck is seen with an American flag as they respond after the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: Alameda County Sheriff’s Department and San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department personnel, from the coroner’s bureau, along with a Butte County Sheriff, examine a victim of the Camp Fire as forensic experts sift through remains in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

A burned fence is photographed near the Paradise Cemetery District in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. The Camp Fire burned near but the cemetery was not harmed during the blaze. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CA – NOVEMBER 13: Julian Martinez and his dog Solstice are photographed along Neal Road in Chico, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Martinez, who lost his home in the Camp Fire, ran for Paradise city council recently. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

A rabbit runs through the Paradise Cemetery District in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. The Camp Fire burned near but the cemetery was not harmed during the blaze. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: A state of Texas flag flies as a PG&E truck passes by as they respond after the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: A Jack in the Box restaurant is seen after the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

Abandoned cars that were burned during the Camp Fire are photographed on Skyway in Paradise, Calif., on Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: American flags are seen along the Skyway after the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Haskin Stein, left, from the coroner’s bureau, and a Butte County Sheriff’s Deputy examine a victim of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

A burned hospital bed is photographed in the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: Alameda County Sheriff’s Department Deputys from the coroner’s bureau prepare to examine a victim of the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

PARADISE, CA – NOVEMBER 13: A Chico police cruiser passes by a sign thanking firefighters and emergency personnel on Martin Luther King Jr. Parkway and East Park Avenue after the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

OROVILLE, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 12: The public lines up to ask questions of police and fire officials at the State Theater in Oroville, Calif., Monday evening, Nov. 12, 2018, on day five of the Camp Fire. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

OROVILLE, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 12: The State Theater in Oroville, Calif., was filled with exhausted families seeking information from police and fire officials on day five of the Camp Fire, Monday evening, Nov. 12, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Chico, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 12: Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea delivers the grim news Monday, Nov. 12, 2018, in Chico, Calif., that 13 more human remains were recovered today for a 42 total of fatalities in the Camp Fire and making it the most deadly wildfire in California history. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

An American flag is photographed through the window of a car that was burned during the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

PULGA, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 12: Betsy Ann Cowley, owner of the Town of Pulga, walks in the ashes of her home on Monday, November 12, 2018. It was destroyed in the Camp Fire last Thursday. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

PULGA, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 12: Fire burns around PG&E transmission towers, Monday, November 12, 2018, east of Pulga,Calif. The first report of the deadly Camp Fire was made near here. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

A burned bed and trapeze bar are photographed in the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

A burned bed and trapeze bar are photographed in the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

A police tape is tied around a fire hydrant in front of the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

A carousel horse horse is photographed in front of the home of Ernest Foss in Paradise, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. Foss, who grew up in the Bay Area, was one of the victims of the Camp Fire. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CA – NOVEMBER 12: Dr. John Madigan, professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Emergency Response Team, (VERT) right, and Dr. Jessie Jellison from Equine Veterinary Services in Oroville, prepare to rescue and treat animals injured in the Camp Fire as they head out from at a staging area in Oroville, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 13, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CA – NOVEMBER 12: Student Laura Weintraub, left, from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Emergency Response Team, (VERT) and volunteer Katie Hatch, treat a horse that was displaced by the Camp Fire at the Butte County Fair Grounds in Gridley, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

CHICO, CA – NOVEMBER 12: Laura Weintraub, left, a student from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine’s Veterinary Emergency Response Team, (VERT) left, and others help treat a horse that was displaced by the Camp Fire at a large animal shelter at the Butte County Fair Grounds in Gridley, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

A cadaver dog searches through rubble from the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Law enforcement officials search through rubble from the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

A cadaver dog and law enforcement officials search through rubble from the Camp Fire in Paradise, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Brad Weldon is photographed with his shotgun during an interview in Paradise, Calif., on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018. Weldon and friend Michiel McCrary chose not to evacuate during the Camp Fire and fought off flames and kept Brad’s home and his 90-year-old mother safe. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

Law enforcement officials try and find victims of the Camp Fire at the Ridgewood Community in Paradise, Calif., on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018. (Randy Vazquez/Bay Area News Group)

BUTTE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA – NOVEMBER 11: A firefighter peers over a cliff at the Camp Fire burning on Highway 70 west of Pulga, Calif. early Sunday morning, November 11, 2018. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

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BUTTE COUNTY — With the Camp Fire claiming the lives of a record 48 people so far and the search for the missing intensifying, details about the victims are beginning to emerge, putting a heartbreakingly human face to the stark numbers of a wildfire that has ravaged 130,000 acres.

When what is now the deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history tore through Paradise on Thursday morning, all signs suggest Ernest Foss Jr., 63, attempted to escape from his home on Edgewood Lane. But the flames were too hot and too fast.

In his online writings, Foss described himself as a “bedbound” two-time cancer survivor who relied on an oxygen tank.

Just outside the charred remains of Foss’s home Tuesday, remnants of the tank, a medical bed, a wheelchair and a walking cane were strewn amid the rubble.

Foss’s daughter, Angela, wrote on Facebook that authorities told her family that her father’s body was found Saturday outside his home, alongside his dog Bernice. They believe that her father died just hours after the fire began.

Foss’s stepson and caregiver, 36-year-old Andrew Burt, is still missing, she wrote, and a friend told KTVU that Burt acted “heroically” by staying with Foss as the fire bore down to try and help him escape.

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Before he moved to Paradise, Foss was a longtime resident of the Bay Area. He lived in Menlo Park and Mill Valley before moving to San Francisco, where he attended high school in the 1970s at the defunct McAteer High School. The campus is now home to the Ruth Asawa San Francisco School of the Arts.

According to Foss’s Facebook page and family accounts, he was once a studio rock musician in San Francisco. Later in life, Foss attended Heald College at the school’s now-shuttered Hayward campus and worked in IT for the college after graduating in 2003.

Foss frequently posted on social media and his personal websites about music and his life experiences under the names “Yoshi Matrix” and “Yoshi’s World.”

“Be glad in his freedom from pain and suffering, and smile at the thought of the loved ones who must have welcomed him into Heaven,” his daughter wrote.

Two other victims — Jesus Fernandez of Concow and Carl Wiley of Magalia — have also been publicly identified.

In the coming days and weeks, more of the sons and daughters, mothers and fathers who perished in the blaze will be identified. Dozens of people are still missing. Each day, recovery workers and cadaver dogs sifting through ashes find new remains.

Workers from CSU Chico’s anthropology department are on hand to assist with identifying bone fragments, and state forensic experts are helping evaluate DNA samples. But it could be weeks before their loved ones have answers.

And still, at 35 percent containment, the fire rages on, with the area burned — 130,000 acres — already more than four times the size of San Francisco.

In addition to the lives lost, some 8,817 structures are gone. Several firefighters have suffered burns, including a fire captain and firefighter who were injured when a propane tank exploded.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, but PG&E reported problems with a power line in the area, and on Tuesday a lawsuit was filed against the utility company alleging its failure to maintain equipment sparked the fire.

In Paradise on Tuesday, a line of about half a dozen American flags sprang up along each side of Skyway downtown, pretty much the only thing still standing in the town of some 26,000.

With most residents evacuated, the streets were filled with workers, from PG&E to tree-removal crews. A thick haze of smoke still hung in the air, along with an eerie silence, save for the sound of an occasional falling tree. In some places, power lines dangled just six or seven feet above the ground.

When the fire burned through town, flames crept up to the edge of the local cemetery but then stopped suddenly. Green grass, speckled with fallen autumn leaves, still surrounded weathered headstones.

With heavy smoke from the Butte County wildfire continuing to drift across the region, the Bay Area air quality remained unhealthy Tuesday and is expected to stay that way until at least Friday, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

Many local school districts say they are monitoring the air quality and amending their schedules accordingly.

Fremont Union School District’s Brian Killgore said schools in the district began the day by limiting students’ outdoor activities and keeping those with asthma and other respiratory issues indoors. With the air quality becoming increasingly worse, schools moved to a strictly indoor schedule and canceled all outdoor after-school sports and activities.

“We will re-evaluate in the morning and move on from there,” Killgore said. “We have parent-teacher conferences this week so most schools have early dismissal, which is helpful.”

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke — who blamed “environmental terrorist groups” for inhibiting the government’s ability to manage forests and increasing the severity of the state’s fires during a radio interview with Breitbart News despite overwhelming evidence that climate change is a driving factor behind the fires — is expected to visit people affected by the Camp Fire with Gov. Jerry Brown.

Afterward, he’ll travel to Southern California, which is fighting their own infernos in Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

The Woolsey fire in Malibu has destroyed thousands of acres and destroyed homes of celebrities Miley Cyrus and Gerard Butler.

In many ways, the raging fires in Malibu and Paradise — two of the cities hardest hit by the state’s wildfires — provide a window into two very different Californias, a distinction that is sure to become clearer as residents begin to rebuild.

Malibu, in Los Angeles County, is a wealthy, well-educated city with median home values in the coastal community among the top two percent in the state — $1.8 million in 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Paradise, in Butte County, is in the bottom third of median home values in the state. At $201,000, homes in the community are about half the California median income.

In the coming months, residents there will have to decide whether to rebuild or move elsewhere.

Even as they provided initial information about the process of returning to burned areas at a press conference Tuesday night, Butte County officials warned that the fire is still active, with record levels of dryness and fuel available to burn.

“The area remains quite ready for continued fire growth,” Cal Fire spokesman Jonathan Pangburn said. “We are not fully out of the woods yet.”

Robert Salonga is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter covering crime and public safety for The Mercury News. A San Jose native, he attended UCLA and has a Master's degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. He previously reported in Washington, D.C., Salinas and the East Bay, and is a middling triathlete. Reach him the low-tech way at 408-920-5002.